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Google Glass assists cardiologists with heart surgery

In a world’s first, a group of cardiologists has successfully used the eye-wearable device Google Glass to guide the opening up of a chronically blocked right coronary artery in the cardiac cath lab.

Cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology, Warsaw, Poland’s capital city, successfully restored blood flow in the occluded right coronary artery of a 49-year-old male patient assisted by Google Glass with an optical head-mounted display.

The display of 3D computed tomographic reconstructions in a mobile application equipped with a hands-free voice recognition system and a zoom function enabled the physician-operators to clearly visualise the distal coronary vessel.

It helped them verify the direction of the guide wire advancement relative to the course of the blocked vessel segment.

The procedure was completed successfully with implantation of two drug-eluting stents.

“This case demonstrates the novel application of wearable devices for display of data sets in the catheterisation lab that can be used for better planning and guidance of interventional procedures,” said lead investigator Maksymilian P Opolski from the Institute of Cardiology.